Zoe Close, Practice Plan head of sales, explains the two-pronged approach it has adopted and highlights some of the changes customers will notice.
Following a record year in 2022 for patients on plan, and as more practices decide to introduce membership plans and join the Practice Plan family, we’re adding some extra pairs of hands to the team to ensure we maintain a great level of customer service.
Making sure our existing customers are well looked after while we help new customers get set up is of paramount importance to us. That’s why we’re adding two new roles to our current structure so that our practices will have more people to turn to if they need help or advice.
To complement the work of our field-based team of more than 20 regional support managers (RSMs), customers needing help will soon be able to turn to one of our practice support coordinators (also field-based) or someone from our team of regional support assistants (RSAs) located at our head office. The new roles allow us to increase our customers’ touchpoints with Practice Plan people, should they need it, and provides a bigger pool of contacts for them to rely upon.
We have already recruited two people to fill the practice support coordinator roles, Pascal Powell and Josh Coleridge. As part of their induction, they have been shadowing some of our regional support managers on visits to practices. So, some customers may have met them already.
When they have completed their induction, they will be available to help practices with any refresher training they need, or with NHS conversion training. They will also carry out some business reviews, follow-up appointments, and deal with people's basic queries and requests.
Although they will be field based, their purpose is to lighten the load for our RSMs, not replace them altogether. We’ve introduced this role to enhance the access to team members our customers already have.
We've also begun to build our new team of RSAs at our head office. These team members will also provide another touchpoint for our clients. Again, their purpose will be to offer our customers a quicker response to any queries.
By basing these team members in the office, it will be easier for them to contact the relevant people they need to speak to, which should result in a quicker resolution to any queries. I’m very pleased we’ve introduced office-based RSAs, as I believe clients will really enjoy having a named person they can speak to about any queries.
I appreciate that sometimes, customers will wait for their RSM because they know them better. But I hope, in time, they will develop a great relationship with our office team members and build the trust and connection needed for us to provide them with a great service.
The whole point of this new structure is to make sure our existing customers are looked after while we continue to help new customers to join us. By recruiting people into these new roles, we want customers to feel they have a number of team members they can rely on for support, and that these team members are people they can speak to regularly and build a great working relationship with.
In the future, it won’t just be their RSM they can rely on for support. They'll have two or three people they can call upon, whether that be the RSA in the office, their practice support coordinators, Pascal, or Josh, or their RSM. So that's the main reason for us making these enhancements to our structure.
What’s the saying? Many hands make light work!
For more information call 01691 684165 or visit www.practiceplan.co.uk